Former U.S. Army Contracting Official Sentenced to 42 Months in Prison for Bribery and Unlawful Salary Supplementation in Off-post Housing Scheme

WASHINGTON – A former U.S. Army contracting official was sentenced today to 42 months in prison in connection with two schemes to solicit more than $30,000 in bribes and other payments from an Egyptian businessman in Kuwait, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride of the Eastern District of Virginia.

William Rondell Collins, 46, of Bartlett, Tenn., was also ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Liam O’Grady to forfeit $5,775, to pay a fine of $1,725 and to serve three years of supervised release following his prison term. Collins pleaded guilty on April 21, 2010, to one count of bribery and one count of unlawful salary supplementation. Collins was originally charged in an indictment filed on Feb. 18, 2010.

Collins was employed by the U.S. Army Area Support Group-Kuwait (ASG-KU). The ASG-KU is responsible for maintaining Camp Arifjan, a U.S. military installation providing support for operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and other locations in the Southwest Asian Theater. As part of those responsibilities, the ASG-KU maintains an off-post housing office, located in downtown Kuwait City, which procures, leases and supervises off-post housing for government employees and military service members stationed at Camp Arifjan. According to court documents, Collins worked in the ASG-KU’s off-post housing office as a housing specialist responsible for supervising private contractors and procuring off-post apartment rentals.

According to court documents, Collins agreed to submit an inflated off-post apartment lease to the United States for approval and then split with an Egyptian businessman more than $23,100 that resulted from the inflated lease payments. According to sentencing documents, Collins also solicited approximately $8,400 from the Egyptian businessman between July and December 2009 and agreed in return to provide advice and preferential treatment in connection with a fixed-price U.S. government contract awarded to the Egyptian businessman’s company. The contract was for maintenance services for off-post housing supervised by Collins and the ASG-KU off-post housing office.

The case was prosecuted by Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan S. Faulconer and Fraud Section Senior Trial Attorney James J. Graham. The investigation was conducted by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigative Division, and members of the National Procurement Fraud Task Force (NPFTF) and the International Contract Corruption Task Force (ICCTF).

The NPFTF, created in October 2006 by the Department of Justice, was designed to promote the early detection, identification, prevention and prosecution of procurement fraud associated with the increase in government contracting activity for national security and other government programs. The ICCTF is a joint law enforcement agency task force that seeks to detect, investigate, and dismantle corruption and contract fraud resulting from U.S. Overseas Contingency Operations worldwide, including in Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.